Budding Fever-Sky rivalry provides glimpse into WNBA's 'tremendous' future

Sunday's game between the Fever and Sky was one of the WNBA's “biggest games since, well, ever” and “gave a glimpse of the league’s future, and it is tremendous,” according to Nancy Armour of the USA TODAY. The “best part of the day was the atmosphere” of the game -- which “was electric.” It was the kind of energy that Chicago “hasn’t seen for a professional basketball game since the Jordan years.” Wintrust Arena was sold out, and there were “lines snaking around the building well before the doors opened.” Armour noted the game was nationally televised on ESPN, “which likely means more blockbuster ratings in a year that’s already seen a lot of them.” The WNBA has “always had talented players,” but what the league has “lacked are the fierce regular-season rivalries.” Armour: “Not the personal animosity and cat fighting that some ignorant and ill-intentioned people are trying to stoke. But heated battles that deliver every time the teams meet, with the biggest stars bringing out the best in one another. Those rivalries drive sports.” The NBA is what it is today in large part because of the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird rivalry, which “began in college and carried over to their professional careers.” This is “what the WNBA now has in the Sky and Fever” with Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark leading the way (USA TODAY, 6/23).

ONE GIANT LEAP: In D.C., Sally Jenkins writes sometimes there are “evolutionary leaps” in sports, and fans are “watching one right now” with Clark and Reese. It is “evident that the WNBA has entered a protean new state” and it is “growing wings.” All the tropes and taunts around Reese and Clark “tend to obscure the fact that they share a couple of essential qualities: pure basketball magnetism and joint ambition.” Large viewership has “flirted with women’s sports before, only to switch them off between Olympics or World Cups.” Jenkins: “The question for the WNBA always has been, could it attract viewers to a routine midseason game between a couple of middling teams on a work night in the Midwest? Well, it has happened.” Jenkins: “What’s drawing such numbers? More than merely the personal rivalry. Viewers are smart enough to know the catfighting heroine-villainess narrative is false, and so is the race-baiting one.” What is “really gripping the audience” is the fact that these women “somehow keep meeting the moment.” Time after time, they “just keep playing bigger despite the weight of public expectations.” Jenkins writes the “pity” is that Reese and Clark will not play each other again until August. In the meantime, they “may just succeed at their mutual enterprise and lock a once-fickle WNBA audience into a forever embrace” (WASHINGTON POST, 6/25).
ELECTRIC ATMOSPHERE: In Chicago, Annie Costabile wrote that the sellout crowd of 10,387 made the excitement "palpable" at Wintrust Arena. Clark before the game said, "We were driving by, and there were so many lines outside of people who were already trying to get in. People are really excited to see this matchup." The first two games between the Sky and Fever were played in front of sellout crowds of 17,274 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Yesterday was the Sky’s opportunity to “create a similarly electric atmosphere at Wintrust Arena.” The game guests included actor/comedian Jason Sudeikis, Bears LB Tremaine Edmunds, Knicks G Jalen Brunson and rapper Chance the Rapper. Reese said, "I love [the crowd]. I love it for women’s sports. They haven’t sold out crowds in a long time. Being able to do this and be here in this moment, continuing to grow women’s basketball, is important to me." The Sky have had three sellouts this season, including yesterday. Their average attendance was 7,241 last season. Costabile noted yesterday's Fever-Sky game was not able to be moved to the United Center "because of a concert." Sky President & CEO Adam Fox indicated that their game Aug. 30 against the Fever “still is scheduled” to be played at Wintrust Arena (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 6/23).

COMPELLING ACTION: In Chicago, Rick Morrissey noted a WNBA game happened yesterday afternoon, and that was all that happened. Morrissey: "No one was hit upside the head. No one was hip-checked to the floor ... It was a fun, exciting game without threat to life or limb.” Morrissey wrote if a national TV audience “expected Wintrust Arena to be the Garden...sorry.” Somehow the two rookies “coexisted on the same court.” Those looking for blood out of basketball’s best current rivalry might “not have gotten what they wanted, but they saw frantic, back-and-forth action. Morrissey wrote Clark and Reese are “not the future of the league,” they are “the present.” Clark is the “reason arenas are selling out.” Reese is the “reason the drama level has soared.” Morrissey: “Is any of this enough for a public suddenly interested in the WNBA to stick around long-term? It should be. I do know that the WNBA shouldn’t want its biggest selling points to be jealousy and ugliness, which has been the case since the arrival of Clark and Reese.” It is “all one big mystery for the WNBA.” The league has to “figure out a way to make the most of it, whatever it is.” Yesterday's game “proved that high-energy basketball is worth staying for” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 6/23).